The present disclosure relates to the field of lighting commissioning. With the inroad of digital intelligence in individual light sources, the field of commissioning of lighting control systems to manage such intelligent individual light sources is becoming an increasingly critical step for a successful installation. Proper commissioning is essential for proper equipment operation, user acceptance and reaching target energy savings. For example, Florida Power & Light defines commissioning as a “systematic process of ensuring that all building systems perform interactively according to the documented design intent and the owner's operational needs.” Most energy codes now require lighting automation, and the 2005 California Title 24 energy code now requires control system commissioning as part of project certification. While the term “commissioning” might extend over a wide variety of contexts in the field of proper installation of lighting control systems, it is established that in a proper method of commissioning, it is important to derive relative distances between individual luminaires which constitute the lighting components in a lighting system to be installed. This allows the establishment of a fixture map with relative positions of the luminaires and standalone sensors and controls, which enables the luminaires to be assigned to different groups within the luminaire landscape and thus to be controlled as groups.
While in principle, there are enormous advantages to be gained by the new lighting systems incorporating intelligent luminaires, in fact traditional cost and required resources for installation and proper commissioning of such complex lighting systems may form a bottleneck for involved decision makers, and may inhibit the take-up of the opportunities to be offered by intelligent lighting systems. With a properly commissioned system however, embedded and automatic lighting control systems can reduce lighting consumption by 20% to 40% in existing buildings and new constructions, as compared with conventional lighting systems.
Thus, so-called auto commissioning techniques are being developed.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,159,156 describes a method of auto commissioning in which a fixture map is derived by determining the relative distances between the individual luminaires. The luminaires are equipped with light sensors which are therefore co-located with each luminaire. By sequential emission of light by the individual luminaires, the amount of light detected at the other luminaires can be converted into a relative distance measurement. As a result, a map with the relative positions of the luminaires can be created. Finally, the luminaires can be assigned to different groups defined with this luminaire landscape.